The Music Makers by Rohini Paranjpe Sathe explores legacy, relationships, and Hindustani classical music’s fading world.
The Music Makers book
The rarefied world of Hindustani classical music with its reverberating ragas, accomplished artists and coteries of connoisseurs, are all brought vibrantly alive in Rohini Paranjpe Sathe’s latest literary fiction, The Music Makers. Published by one of the country’s leading publishing houses, Om Books International, and represented by one of India’s largest literary agencies, The Book Bakers, this book is a masterly piece of storytelling.
The Music Makers opens with its lead protagonist, Padma Vibhushan Pandit Sadashiv Buwa Shrotri, on his way to perform in an evening concert. The fading light outside reminds him of his advancing age and the niggling fear that mortality may be closing in on him sooner than later. That prepares the way to the premise of the book: what is the legacy that an artist leaves behind? In this fast-paced world where classical traditions are being relegated to the margins, can an age-old art that is expounded at leisure hope to survive? Or, as one of the characters in the book asks caustically, will it become extinct like the dinosaurs?
Music and its legacy are, however, not the sole focus of this book. As the author explains, “An artist, however single-minded and absorbed in the pursuit of his art, however fulfilled in his tryst with his muse, is still a human being with human needs. Living in a real world with real people, a world where patriarchy still prevails and violence has become inescapable. The noisy dynamics of the human relationships that he is enmeshed in, form the background score to his personal musical journey, sometimes conducive, sometimes disturbing. And that noisy score may threaten to swamp the space where music is made. Exploring that became a fascinating, compelling obsession for me.”
And thence come the parallel stories: the relationships between Shrotri Buwa and his wife, and between his wife and her siblings. We have dysfunctional families, unequal relations, patriarchal domination, denial of choice, the struggles to break free, misogyny and violence - the ugly reality that all need to navigate their way through.
Rohini is a skilful storyteller. Her voice is strong yet refined: she lets us soak blissfully in resonant melody when describing concerts and riyaz sessions yet grabs us boldly by the throat when narrating episodes of violence. She describes scenes, events, moods in intricate detail. There is as much attention to detail in describing the technique and craft of music or the ambience of a concert venue, as there is to describing an old quarter of the city and the idiosyncrasies of its citizens, or again the attitudes and expectations that shift through gender and class. She peels through the complex emotional layers that clothe humans, showing us ego and selfish preoccupation, lust and brutality, empathy and compassion, loyalty and duty, optimism and despair, a wide gamut that swirl through the human psyche in all their bold swagger as well as their subtle nuances. And while the arc of her narrative comes to rest on a satisfying resolution, bringing together all the threads of all the parallel stories, she allows some room for the disturbingly unpleasant to remain, reminding us that realistically all may not always end well.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
